Guild Wars 2

timmyf.1490:

Serious question for you, Pixie. Do you honestly believe that the Anet developers have no clue that people are frustrated with some of the Megaserver functionality right now?

I find it far more likely that they 1) know 2) are trying to do something about it 3) aren’t saying anything because they’re trying to figure out a fix and implement it as quickly as possible but haven’t fully fleshed out what that looks like or how long it will take.

No, I’m sure they’re aware people are unhappy but considering Colins advice was “guild up” it makes me wonder whether they’re actually listening. What I was trying to get at really is this amount of players offering feedback warrants someone biting the bullet and answering it. Even if it’s just to say “No, sorry we won’t be making these changes this our game this is the direction we want to take it etc etc.” I could respect that and find elsewhere.

They haven’t made any major changes, so I’m under the impression they’re aware but they don’t really want to change anything. This is how they want it to be (minus a few tweaks for bosses) for the asian market. /tinfoil hat

They need a new system for in-game communication for sure. The news feed on the launcher is entirely insufficient.

Nage.1520:

@Morrigan

This is how all companies work. If I was in a store and opened a new store, the resources go to building that store. That’s how companies work. If not, no company would ever expand.

When companies expand it takes investment, which takes money, time and energy. If your’e mad about it you’re not only unrealistic but completely unfair.

Because when the cash flow from China hits that will massively benefit us. The money will go to upgrading the game as a whole, not just China.

It’s an investment for all of us.
[/quote]

I happen to run several companies and have expanded several times but at no time would I ever allow my current customer base to suffer due to growth because the competition would quickly take over that business. I’m not being unrealistic, you are thinking that the added income will grow the NA content because at the end of the day they will be vastly different and require their own set of developers which will compromise the end product delivered to both sides.

Absolutely you take some of the profits to build the next business but never fully cannibalize the current one in hopes the second is successful that’s business suicide. They should have continued to deliver and keep their core business strong even if it meant the 2nd release would take longer because risking what got you there to begin with is poor management.

They’ve already answered — by rolling out megaservers over the past few days to the remaining maps that weren’t megaserved on the 15th.

I wish the dev team was as down to earth in terms of communication as some indie games. For instance, Day Z developers such as Dean “Rocket” Hall post on Reddit, and twitter frequently on a daily basis. I’ve never seen such raw interaction with the community, it’ a shame that Arenanet has to keep everything under lock and key in terms of information. This method of communication is outdated and extremely stale, it really needs to become more transparent.

Max Lexandre.6279:

Why so much silence?

I don’t know what you mean, theres Two dev posts today about converting gems to gold to buy enamaled dyes off the tp……..

ShinjoNaomi.1896:

Dosvidaniya.3260:

And their army of white knights.

And always, a jab at the people who, for their own reasons, enjoy the game…

“White Knight,” is not synonymous with, “people who enjoy the game.”

Hannelore.8153:

Its partly the players’ fault for ignoring being told that its the holidays in almost every single thread. ANet does not have to make official annoouncements when they take time off, but given that almost every single company takes time off on the holidays, its extremely likely that they have also done so.

Have to disagree here. Its not the players’ fault that ANet decided to release a patch that they knew in advance would adversely impact (in part) the playerbase just before a holiday. Of course they should have their Easter holiday away from work, but the release should have been scheduled accordingly.

Dusty Moon.4382:

They already stated that they are not going to show their hands any more and this was due to the LS. They said a lot and people were figuring out what was going on. They want some thing for players to figure out themselves.

Most games, now a days, do not have healthy communities. Why is that? Too many players feel they are ‘OWED’ something and most are just plain snarky. This attitude means they complain about EVERYTHING, just to complain. A great example is the wardrobe system, people wanted it and the same people are complaining about it.

You can’t change players. A.Net has done all they can, now it is up to the players. A.Net can change the game all they want to foster a good community but players have the ultimate responsibility in this. ASK THE PLAYERS, NOT A.NET.

I cannot honestly say that I have played most games enough, and interacted with their communities to a sufficient degree, to be able to diagnose the health of the thousands of game communities out there. That said, customers are OWED something. They are owed the product or service for which they paid. Players are customers.

The “blame” can, in my opinion, be assigned in fairly equal parts to both company and customer. The company wants as many paying customers as possible and so will hype their product to the high heavens to recoup the massive investment required to launch an MMO. They will also, sometimes (often ?) use fairly vague terminology so as to create interest in the product. This leads to vague, or inaccurate, expectations on the part of the customers. The customers, on the other hand, often seem to take, “we are looking into,” or, “we would like to,” or the like, as, “we promise !” Customers also, all too often, read their own desires into the vague design statements without considering that one interpretation of a statement is not necessarily the only interpretation.

timmyf.1490:

They care. This is their life. It is their work. It is their play. They live and breathe this game just as much, if not more, as many of us.

This is what gets me so upset. Saying that they don’t care is just beyond comprehension.

Maybe they dropped the ball, or failed to account for important information, or didn’t follow through. But they don’t care?

Ridiculous.

We do not read minds. A company needs to show that it cares. This is a basic premise, Customer Service 101, of the retail/service industry. You need to act like you genuinely care about your customers’ concerns, and you need to do so in a fashion that communicates that sense of care and urgency.

And for what it is worth there are all too many people out there in the work force who care about their paycheck, but not necessarily about their product, their job, or their customers.

Ultimately there is a looming China release, there was a holiday, and so on. These are not excuses for a lapse in customer service, they are reasons for not launching the patch when they did. But these sorts of mistakes happen. All we can hope is that they are not repeated.

Sekhmet.6153:

Aidan Savage.2078:

Saying nothing also keeps their ability and willingness to actually work for a game intact. What would you prefer? A higher turnover rate of staff because every time they make posts it’s a bunch of “kitten YOU ANET, YOU kitten UP MY GAME AND NOW I CANT kitten PLAY HOW I kitten WANT TO PLAY THE kitten GAME!!!!!!!1!!11oneeleven”? I dont know about you, but if I had to deal with that on an hourly basis, it would not belong before I told Anet “go kitten yourself, I’m not dealing with a bunch of whining brats all day everyday.”

I’m pretty sure a large part of the world is paid to work everyday dealing with “whining brats”. Thats what retail is, as well as much of the service industry.

Plus, they don’t have to do any physical labor. I would love to get paid to read people complain, beats having to listen to them do so in person or over the phone, or do actual labor.

I’m sure the staff can handle a lot of people being upset.

Preach on, brother!

When people say that reading a forum is so distressing that it would make them quit their job it makes me wonder what they actually do for a living. Certainly not anything that is 99% of the workforce. Deep wilderness Hermit perhaps?

I think that this new stance of silence is from the backlash they’ve gotten from responding.

Used to they’d respond more often, and it’d just elicit more complaints.

shawn.1298:

Dusty Moon.4382:

THEIR GAME – THEIR VISION, not yours. You have not coded, put blood, sweat and yes, tears into this game and playing doesn’t count.

This is pretty much the sentiment that led RIFT to fall from a promising game to a game that can’t get above 45 even as free to play. Start blaming the complainers and you’ll have no game.

This is untrue on so many levels it’s not funny. And Anet isn’t Trion, regardless. The guy who ran Trion was an old raiding guy, who was in love with raids and focused on raids and didn’t get anything besides raids. As a result, Rift was okay if you raided and no so okay if you did something else.

This game is backwards in a sense. The guys here want to focus on the open world. The difference is, there are very few games that focus on the open world and tons of games that focus on raids.

Guild Wars 2 is only in danger if they listen to the people who want the focus to shift. Or if another game that focuses on the open world as the main focus comes out.

Vlad Morbius.1759:

Nage.1520:

@Morrigan

This is how all companies work. If I was in a store and opened a new store, the resources go to building that store. That’s how companies work. If not, no company would ever expand.

When companies expand it takes investment, which takes money, time and energy. If your’e mad about it you’re not only unrealistic but completely unfair.

Because when the cash flow from China hits that will massively benefit us. The money will go to upgrading the game as a whole, not just China.

It’s an investment for all of us.

I happen to run several companies and have expanded several times but at no time would I ever allow my current customer base to suffer due to growth because the competition would quickly take over that business. I’m not being unrealistic, you are thinking that the added income will grow the NA content because at the end of the day they will be vastly different and require their own set of developers which will compromise the end product delivered to both sides.

Absolutely you take some of the profits to build the next business but never fully cannibalize the current one in hopes the second is successful that’s business suicide. They should have continued to deliver and keep their core business strong even if it meant the 2nd release would take longer because risking what got you there to begin with is poor management.[/quote]

If you have any evidence that they’re cannibalizing anything, feel free to show me. The base game was already programmed. Changes were made.

And people only suffer here because they’re expecting more than is reasoanble to expect. There were always people who had complaints in any business I was ever associated with. One person wanted to return a walkman three months after they bought it and dropped it in a toilet.

Sometimes we stopped carrying stuff because it wasn’t profitable, even though some people wanted it. And they could blame us opening other stores, but it wasn’t the reason we stopped carrying it.

The person I was responding to was made that resources from Guild Wars 2 were funding Guild Wars 2 China. Unless you think that’s a reason to be mad, it seems like you completely missed my point.

Minos.5168:

I think that this new stance of silence is from the backlash they’ve gotten from responding.

Used to they’d respond more often, and it’d just elicit more complaints.

Of course it would elicit complaints. Most of the time, they’re commenting on polarizing topics. That’s an expected response. It’s just that there are people on the other side, who aren’t complaining. Look at this megaserver business. If you only read the forums, you’d think it was a massive failure and ArenaNet is the devil for not immediately rolling back the changes. But log in and ask people, and most would say they like it.

If they stopped responding because they thought the responses were too uncivil or rude, that’d be a huge failure on their part. If I break or change something I’m working on for a customer, and they contact me to ask what the hell is going on, I’m not going to tell them to kitten off because they seemed agitated. (Rarely have I seen a response on here completely out of control. Maybe the mods do a good job culling it, but the posts asking for responses or changes are, for the most part, civil. They’re just laced with frustration.)

It was probably a combination of things that caused them to stop communicating — cutting costs, not being able to retain employees, cutting costs, shifts in focus, bad management, cutting costs, cutting costs…

That’s my first ever forum post here. I’m one of those people that lurk around and wait for any kind of Information on the game to pop up on the forums.

Megaserver was for me a bit of a kick in the balls. Gone are the familiar faces that you could meet daily on the server instead my Character is now part of an anonymous crowd.

Also EU player here so the new and improved chat option insures that only around 25% of the players in map chat can even read what I write. Even if I try to write in their native language.

That alone are two points that damage a healthy comunity in my mind.

It would be really nice to know if it “works as intended” or not.
My reason to post now was to show that there are people like me who don’t really post on the forums but ARE kind of in Limbo right now.

I’m all for figuring stuff out myself as long as it concerns the living story but a content patch should not be this vague.

Please excuse my English, it’s not my first language.

EDIT: I just read on the German forums confirmation that ANet is working on the issues I wrote here. so that’s good enough for me right now.

I’m very aware of what a whiny place the forum can be and I’m also aware that Anet is constantly in a “Kittened of you do, puppy’d if you don’t” situation.

However

Considering the enormous backlash the update has caused, with countless civilised and fair concerns popping up, I find it rather offensive not to get any recognition whatsoever. Furthermore, seeing the only communication going out either filled with “everything is great!”, “People love it”, “Couldn’t be better!”, or “Please bundle all your complaints in one topic (so we can ignore them more easily, I would like to silently add to that)”, then it becomes pretty disgusting in my opinion.

This whole ordeal has caused a great loss of trust in Anet for me. I, as part of a community, do not feel heard or respected in any way.

I do not consider myself whiny when I react to valid, real problems. At worst it made me cynical.

Again, what kind of response should they give? Because there are people loving this update. There’s are two threads on reddit right now saying that Orr is fun again, with well over a hundred upvotes. There are people in game talking about how great it is to see people in zones again.

So what should Anet say, particularly if they intend to keep the mega servers?

1. We’re sorry but you’re out of luck?
2. We understand you have issues, but we’re not changing anything?

We know they’re working on making improvements. It’s brand new in the game. They said they’d be working on it and fine-tuning it before it was launched.

People are taking hits at the first incarnation of a major system, and Anet is collecting data to make changes necessary.

Beyond that there really isn’t much to say. I’m not sure why people feel they need so much validation.

Any kind of response- because that would tell me that

a) they actually give a kitten

b) they see their players as actual people and not just pixels to be shoved around

c) if they came out and said- working as intended it is not a problem as we see it- people can make up their minds if they want to live with it or not.

Nage.1520:

Again, what kind of response should they give? Because there are people loving this update. There’s are two threads on reddit right now saying that Orr is fun again, with well over a hundred upvotes. There are people in game talking about how great it is to see people in zones again.

Again, my experiences are different. I haven’t met many people who love it (one to be more accurate). So to pretend that people (like a majority or nearly all people except for a few “whiney”) all love it just doesn’t seem to be true.

It would be hard to have any reliable data to prove or disprove how popular or unpopular this update has been because in all MMOs the majority of players never use the forums. Anet had said they were going to start with zones that were of the lowest population throughout the game servers to see how it went and go from there. There really isn’t a point for Anet to respond to all of these threads because they’re collecting whatever data they need to make changes.

It might annoy some people but part of the proof that Anet pays attention is extra “new build is available” or server maintenance etc so they are actively looking at things but sure these new builds aren’t making any major changes to the mega server system. The Mega Server imo has been a great improvement to the game but some work does need to be done for world bosses and temple events.

I think Anet should make world bosses into instanced events where a set amount of people have to enter it before the world boss event can be started. They would also need to make it where people guilds can create private instances for world bosses instead of summoning a world boss in a map potentially with people doing other things with no intentions of helping out with a world boss.

People are only going to do a world boss once per day since they won’t get the chance for the loot they’re after but once per day anyways so it probably wouldn’t impact the servers at all. I’ve been happy with the Mega Server so far. Something that seems to have stayed the same is the afk’ers at Tequatl and the people that die and do not use the WP and lay there dead thus not contributing to DPS or Defense and increasing the chances of failing.

If Anet made these into instances they could place in a more strict AFK timer to stop people from AFKing at a world boss and they could also trigger an auto respawn at the nearest WP and with it being in an instance they could remove the WP cost. That alone would solve issues that cause bosses like Teq to fail when it really should never fail.

Pirlipat.2479:

Nage.1520:

Again, what kind of response should they give? Because there are people loving this update. There’s are two threads on reddit right now saying that Orr is fun again, with well over a hundred upvotes. There are people in game talking about how great it is to see people in zones again.

Again, my experiences are different. I haven’t met many people who love it (one to be more accurate). So to pretend that people (like a majority or nearly all people except for a few “whiney”) all love it just doesn’t seem to be true.

Check reddit, and you’ll find people who love it. Threads up on the first page. Post there and ask who loves it.

Depending on this forum for an accurate view of who likes what is only getting one side of the story, most of the time.

southbeatz.2780:

It would be hard to have any reliable data to prove or disprove how popular or unpopular this update has been because in all MMOs the majority of players never use the forums.

But that goes in both dircetions. I’m just sick of beeing called a “vocal minority” by some people while by a strange logic those people posting on reddit or where ever are said to be those who express a majorities opinion. Like you said I don’t think any of us users can claim to know what everyone thinks. So why not leave that argument aside entirely.

Nage.1520:

Check reddit, and you’ll find people who love it. Threads up on the first page. Post there and ask who loves it.

There are people who like this patch, of course. By my experience they come from small servers that had a dying population – so even if the situation now is not so good, it’s still better for them. Unfortunately, the population of small servers, by it’s very nature, makes up a tiny minority of the whole.

I guess the difference in what everyone of us sees in the game depends on who we get usually thrown into instance with. The people that i see usually come from Desolation, Gandara, Elona, Abaddon and Vizunach, with some occasional people from Baruch Bay thrown in. Those people are (understandably) not thrilled about the changes, because while low pop servers have it better, they have it better at the (very high) cost to the former high pop ones. Or to the nonenglish language servers that get thrown in with the same instance with english speakers and are then either flamed or ignored, depending on cht filter setting.
And even then, i still see occasionally people that announce their like of megaserver, that later get angry because they didn’t manage to tag the boss before it died, or flame everyone else because Teq attempt was a fail. Or because their fps are low and all they see is a slide show.

And also – if the people at this forum are not representative of the population to you, why do you think that reddit people are?

Astralporing, I do play on a smaller server and I’m not that happy with it either. It sure has some pros but I see alot of cons too.

I think it highly depends on how you play and what you expect from your gameplay, how much it influences you and if you like it or not. Until now I could guest to a fuller server when I wanted to have more people around. I had a choice. Now the megaserver is deciding whats best for me and I have my doubts that a software can do this for all and everytime.

I am not so much critisising that there is no answer from a developer but I do not like how the whole procedure was done. I wish they would have given the people more time to adapt to the changes and that they would have tried to make the system work properly (not only from a technical side) before they spread it everywhere or at least to get a note why they had to abandon their former plan.

Just to say “oh it works so fine, we implement it everywhere” sounds like “we don’t care what you think” for me, even if it probably isn’t entirely true.

Astralporing.1957:

Nage.1520:

Check reddit, and you’ll find people who love it. Threads up on the first page. Post there and ask who loves it.

There are people who like this patch, of course. By my experience they come from small servers that had a dying population – so even if the situation now is not so good, it’s still better for them. Unfortunately, the population of small servers, by it’s very nature, makes up a tiny minority of the whole.

I guess the difference in what everyone of us sees in the game depends on who we get usually thrown into instance with. The people that i see usually come from Desolation, Gandara, Elona, Abaddon and Vizunach, with some occasional people from Baruch Bay thrown in. Those people are (understandably) not thrilled about the changes, because while low pop servers have it better, they have it better at the (very high) cost to the former high pop ones. Or to the nonenglish language servers that get thrown in with the same instance with english speakers and are then either flamed or ignored, depending on cht filter setting.
And even then, i still see occasionally people that announce their like of megaserver, that later get angry because they didn’t manage to tag the boss before it died, or flame everyone else because Teq attempt was a fail. Or because their fps are low and all they see is a slide show.

And also – if the people at this forum are not representative of the population to you, why do you think that reddit people are?

I have a guild of a lot of people, on Tarnished Coast who all seem to like this upgrade. At least all I’ve talked to, and that’s quite a few. They like it because we’re a guild that likes open world stuff. Not just world bosses. Not just farming nodes. We like the open world.

The open world feels more alive…even on Tarnished Coast, which is one of the busiest servers.

It’s even worse on WvW sub forum.

Nage.1520:

I have a guild of a lot of people, on Tarnished Coast who all seem to like this upgrade. At least all I’ve talked to, and that’s quite a few. They like it because we’re a guild that likes open world stuff. Not just world bosses. Not just farming nodes. We like the open world.

The open world feels more alive…even on Tarnished Coast, which is one of the busiest servers.

As a fellow TC-er, I can see it both ways.

The thing is, for less-populated maps, it’s pretty good. It’s not perfect, because the amount of “talking smack” and GIFT-type behaviour is up approximately 1200% (probably an underestimate, if anything!), and I really think GIFT’d players should be tagged to hang out with equally GIFT’d ones, but that’s another thread…

For heavily-populated maps, it’s extremely trying, because the current algorithm for determining whether to spawn another server seems to really like to fill maps to absolute bursting point. I used to be able to do World Bosses and actually have, y’know, a framerate. Not a good framerate, but a framerate. I could also actually use skills and avoid attacks and stuff, rather than dying to something that hadn’t rendered or animated on my screen!

Post-megaserver? Hahaha. It’s like just after they buffed the rewards from the World Bosses. Framerates in the single digits, most dangerous things not rendering, and even if they did the massive lag (which this was supposed to prevent!) means there is nothing that can be done about it. They are still doable because spamming 1 usually works, but good god, it’s a pretty significant fun decrease.

So I think the problem was making everything into a megaserver instantly, rather than watching and waiting. It’s weird because they said they’d watch and wait – but they apparently didn’t, and we’re told they’re now on holiday! Ummm. Not the best planning, there, Anet. Perhaps wait until AFTER the holiday for the big release?

EDIT – Also if maps are currently trying to have, say, 200 players on them, where possible, they should probably lower that to like, 100 – and actually leave room for guilds and friends and so on to arrive, and for people to have framerates!

Minos.5168:

I think that this new stance of silence is from the backlash they’ve gotten from responding.

Used to they’d respond more often, and it’d just elicit more complaints.

That’d be pretty strange. As a company, you want complaints, well, you want people to say what they don’t like. You don’t have to agree with them or follow them, but you should be compiling them. If you get more complaints, as a result of communication, that’s information, and useful info. A lot of serious fans hate complaints because they make them feel bad, but that is fan-ish behaviour, not smart professional behaviour.

The only time you don’t want to communicate is prematurely – i.e. to say “Oh we won’t be changing X, it’s great that way!”, when it turns out that in a meeting eight hours later, they decide to change X. I imagine this is the main reason for the current lack of communication, but tempus fugit and all that.

Morrigan.2809:

Any kind of response- because that would tell me that

a) they actually give a kitten

b) they see their players as actual people and not just pixels to be shoved around

c) if they came out and said- working as intended it is not a problem as we see it- people can make up their minds if they want to live with it or not.

• Response from a German community manager: https://forum-de.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Megaserver-System-Die-Konsequenzen/page/15#post374779
• Translation: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Feedback-Questions-MegaServer/3949954

Lishtenbird.2814:

Morrigan.2809:

Any kind of response- because that would tell me that

a) they actually give a kitten

b) they see their players as actual people and not just pixels to be shoved around

c) if they came out and said- working as intended it is not a problem as we see it- people can make up their minds if they want to live with it or not.

• Response from a German community manager: https://forum-de.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Megaserver-System-Die-Konsequenzen/page/15#post374779
• Translation: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Feedback-Questions-MegaServer/3949954

thank you

If there’s a statement you can make about how “all” players feel (and I don’t believe you can), I’d say it’s this:

EU players hate it. NA players like it.

That’s the reason I’d guess a ton of you keep saying that literally everybody hates it (on EU). When I ask around, responses are moderately positive (I am in NA).

timmyf.1490:

If there’s a statement you can make about how “all” players feel (and I don’t believe you can), I’d say it’s this:

EU players hate it. NA players like it.

That’s the reason I’d guess a ton of you keep saying that literally everybody hates it (on EU). When I ask around, responses are moderately positive (I am in NA).

I’m on EU and I don’t hate it. In fact I’m quite enjoying it.

AdaephonDelat.3890:

timmyf.1490:

If there’s a statement you can make about how “all” players feel (and I don’t believe you can), I’d say it’s this:

EU players hate it. NA players like it.

That’s the reason I’d guess a ton of you keep saying that literally everybody hates it (on EU). When I ask around, responses are moderately positive (I am in NA).

I’m on EU and I don’t hate it. In fact I’m quite enjoying it.

Oh, for sure. And there’s players on NA who hate it. I’m just trying to figure out why it seems overwhelmingly positive on my servers and overwhelmingly negative on the servers of others posting here. And they all seem to be in the EU. German especially, perhaps?

A more accurate generalization in my mind would be:

There are a small group of people who decided the Megaservers were going to suck long before they were implemented.

There are a small group of people who decided the Megaservers were going to be awesome long before they were implemented.

These two groups are beyond changing their mind. Making any decision in the hopes of swaying them one way or the other is fruitless. As a developer, yes… you ignore those people.

Then you have the bulk of the players who are still trying to adapt and having varying reservations and approvals, with varying levels of being able to communicate their concerns or likes. These are the people you need to engage, and keep engaged. It doesn’t necessarily have to be through forums or blog posts.

Believe it or not, seeing “A New Build Is Available” also helps to do so (and in my opinion, does so better than any words can). It tells them that you are still working on it, even if it doesn’t always address their particular concern. Actions still do speak louder than words.

Just not on official forums, which by and large tend to be the domain of those first two groups.

timmyf.1490:

AdaephonDelat.3890:

timmyf.1490:

If there’s a statement you can make about how “all” players feel (and I don’t believe you can), I’d say it’s this:

EU players hate it. NA players like it.

That’s the reason I’d guess a ton of you keep saying that literally everybody hates it (on EU). When I ask around, responses are moderately positive (I am in NA).

I’m on EU and I don’t hate it. In fact I’m quite enjoying it.

Oh, for sure. And there’s players on NA who hate it. I’m just trying to figure out why it seems overwhelmingly positive on my servers and overwhelmingly negative on the servers of others posting here. And they all seem to be in the EU. German especially, perhaps?

not from a German server but from GH an international English server.

my guess would be that server culture played a bigger part in EU communities and that just like cultures in Europe the server cultures are more diverse than in NA

Add to that the obvious language issues and the fact that from my experience people in EU are more likely to be extremely individualistic and do not actually mind playing with less players rather than a huge bunch of random people.

I have seen several posts by NA players that seem completely unaware that servers are actually different and not just interchangeable based on pop.

TC seems to be the exception to this rule.

But in EU servers matter

Pirlipat.2479:

I didn’t want the mega-server yesterday, I wanted it when it’s ready.

Apparently, we’ve been playing a Beta version all along.

I think there’s plenty of server pride and differentiation in NA. Sanctum of Rall, my server, was a pretty populated server in PvE. (Our WvW fell apart after practically every WvW guild transferred when we fell out of T1.) It was overall a very friendly place with decent quality chat.

Megaserver has definitely led to a decline in chat. There’s a lot more negativity and angry-snark (as opposed to funny-snark) going on.

I’ve just hoped that, over time, Megaserver improvements lead to me being placed with a higher percentage of the type of players I enjoy playing with, as Anet has said they intend to tweak the algorithms and add new factors in the future.

timmyf.1490:

I think there’s plenty of server pride and differentiation in NA. Sanctum of Rall, my server, was a pretty populated server in PvE. (Our WvW fell apart after practically every WvW guild transferred when we fell out of T1.) It was overall a very friendly place with decent quality chat.

Megaserver has definitely led to a decline in chat. There’s a lot more negativity and angry-snark (as opposed to funny-snark) going on.

I’ve just hoped that, over time, Megaserver improvements lead to me being placed with a higher percentage of the type of players I enjoy playing with, as Anet has said they intend to tweak the algorithms and add new factors in the future.

That’s my hope too, but I’d really like to hear what they’re planning, more specifically, fairly soon. TC was a nice server and there is a ton more nastiness now – and I notice I’m not even always getting in the same megaservers as my guildmates! I’d really like to see some kind of RPer flag and a STRONG preference for putting us with that (and maybe a strong preference for anyone who was previously warned/suspended for verbal abuse to be put elsewhere).

Morrigan.2809:

Rauderi.8706:

Burnfall.9573:

timmyf.1490:

Look, it’s okay to have criticisms about the game. I have my own. Trust me, people on my guild’s Teamspeak channel are often privy to some angry ranting about this game.

That said, a lot of the good feedback on these forums is totally obscured by dozens of angry hyperbole. Whatever you think of Megaserver, it is not destroying the game. It is not the worst thing ArenaNet has ever done. It is not so broken that the only option is to immediately remove it. They did not do it to save tons of money because the game is failing.

Chill. Out.

If this community doesn’t police its own worst offenders, it will remain a toxic pool of discontent. We’ve seen great examples of self-regulating our members within the CDI posts. Bringing that same attitude to the entire forum would be a great first step at helping developers be comfortable enough to post here regularly.

We need to build trust with them first. Trust is earned. We aren’t earning it .

“Bringing that same attitude to the entire forum would be a great first step at helping developers be comfortable enough to post here regularly ".

If i’m hearing you right?

what are you talking about?

There are multi-tude of that in the forums and you guess what?, Arena.net still remain silent.

“If this community doesn’t police its own worst offenders, it will remain a toxic pool of discontent”

Let me get this straight, it is Arena.net Duty to communicate with their player base and resolve the problems that they may have.

As a Company to an employee, it is the Company Respnsibility to communicate to their employess. Toxic or not: Communication help the Company know the needs of their employees and Resolving any problems that they may have

Is it the employee responsibility to help the employer “feel comfortable” to being an employer?

As a Parent to a child, it is the Parent Responsibility to communicate to their child. Toxic or Not: Communication help the Parent know their child and Resolving their child problems that they may have

Is it the child responsibly to “help his/her parent feel comfortable” to being a Parent ?

To you, the reason why Arena.net (the Parent, the Company) do not communicate and resolve our concerns and problems is because we made them feel uncomfortable and that we are toxic?

In other word, we failed in becoming their slaves servants and their programmable robots…

WoW!

just

WoW!

…You’re the reason we can’t have nice things. -_-

Developers are still people, paid or not. Would you want to be on the back end of all this virtual garbage people are spewing? No.

So learn how to be productive. That will open the dialog between gamers and developers, and give them much less digital poo they have to sort through to find good ideas they can incorporate into their game design.

Geez. :\

it is Burnfall- he is kind of known on the forums for speaking in prophetic/ not sure what the term is, terms.

hi Burnfall- /wave

hi Morrigan /wave back

chemiclord.3978:

A more accurate generalization in my mind would be:

There are a small group of people who decided the Megaservers were going to suck long before they were implemented.

There are a small group of people who decided the Megaservers were going to be awesome long before they were implemented.

These two groups are beyond changing their mind. Making any decision in the hopes of swaying them one way or the other is fruitless. As a developer, yes… you ignore those people.

Then you have the bulk of the players who are still trying to adapt and having varying reservations and approvals, with varying levels of being able to communicate their concerns or likes. These are the people you need to engage, and keep engaged. It doesn’t necessarily have to be through forums or blog posts.

Believe it or not, seeing “A New Build Is Available” also helps to do so (and in my opinion, does so better than any words can). It tells them that you are still working on it, even if it doesn’t always address their particular concern. Actions still do speak louder than words.

Just not on official forums, which by and large tend to be the domain of those first two groups.

I actually had high hopes for the megaserver, but that doesn’t mean there’s no room for improvement. I find playing the game out in most zones a better experience now that before the patch, but I really do think that Anet should leave cities out of the mega-server equation. That would solve a lot of problems people have right there, as far as community goes anyway.

And they could probably change the algorhythm so they don’t overfill maps, with the exception of when the big bosses like the Wurm, and Tequatl spawn. You need lots and lots of players for those. But the rest of the time, yeah, I think adjustments need to be made. I also think they will be made.

But yes, I don’t think the people on the forums posting about it are the main bulk of the population.

They could just have a bot say thank you for your post then would be more then silence but what do you realty want them to say “your ideal is the best our are dumb thank you for saving us with you big bran?” Ppl who make this type of thread sounds like they are more stroking there egos then trying to make a point.

They have been awfully quiet since the feature patch release.

hedix.1986:

Pirlipat.2479:

I didn’t want the mega-server yesterday, I wanted it when it’s ready.

Apparently, we’ve been playing a Beta version all along.

We’ve been the guinea pigs for the China release, didn’t you know?

Flytrap.8075:

hedix.1986:

Pirlipat.2479:

I didn’t want the mega-server yesterday, I wanted it when it’s ready.

Apparently, we’ve been playing a Beta version all along.

We’ve been the guinea pigs for the China release, didn’t you know?

I think that true for every thing China has a really big market share so the target is going to be aimed at them you seem to not understand business or at least try to put this in a negative way. After China done with they may move to JP then it will become a Beta for them from there maybe East EU? etc.. etc.. all games are beta for something else or they would not changes at all. Its silly to get mad at this if you want Anet or any business to work and grow that how a globalized world works.

timmyf.1490:

If there’s a statement you can make about how “all” players feel (and I don’t believe you can), I’d say it’s this:

EU players hate it. NA players like it.

That’s the reason I’d guess a ton of you keep saying that literally everybody hates it (on EU). When I ask around, responses are moderately positive (I am in NA).

I agree with you that these kind of generalisations are always incorrect but it’s possible that a lot of the people who truly dislike it have just stopped playing or just stopped playing PVE or simply can’t be bothered responding.

In my case I tried using the current megaserver system to do a few bosses, half simply didn’t spawn, the other half died so quickly in a hail of fire that it felt pointless, 10-15 mins prep for the Fire Elemental then it died in 30 seconds. Given that and the fact that we can no longer use gw2stuff to let us know when a boss or temple is up so I’m operating in the kind of informational limbo that existed when the game first launched prompted me to pretty much give up on PVE for now while I try sPVP for a while.

If/when they start fixing the megaservers I’ll give it another go but they really need to get a move on. Rolling “broken” software out that removes a bunch of features that people are used to and just leaving it there is never a good idea.

Please don’t be upset by this, but I’d like to pick at what you said because I think it’s important.

Pifil.5193:

In my case I tried using the current megaserver system to do a few bosses, half simply didn’t spawn

Bugged events can be fixed. This is not evidence that Megaserver is a bad idea or unworkable. Plenty of events bugged before Megaserver. This isn’t even a new thing.

Pifil.5193:

the other half died so quickly in a hail of fire that it felt pointless, 10-15 mins prep for the Fire Elemental then it died in 30 seconds.

World Boss event scaling has always been a mess. My server routinely had tons of people in these events and all the bosses melted like this. This isn’t a problem caused by Megaserver, it’s existed for awhile.

World Boss event scaling can be fixed even if Megaserver remains.

Pifil.5193:

Given that and the fact that we can no longer use gw2stuff to let us know when a boss or temple is up so I’m operating in the kind of informational limbo that existed when the game first launched prompted me to pretty much give up on PVE for now while I try sPVP for a while.

You don’t need gw2stuff. The boss schedule is posted. I agree that Temples are more difficult.

I like sPvP, but don’t expect to get the love and attention of devs over there either…

Pifil.5193:

If/when they start fixing the megaservers I’ll give it another go but they really need to get a move on. Rolling “broken” software out that removes a bunch of features that people are used to and just leaving it there is never a good idea.

But it’s not broken. You just don’t like it.

timmyf.1490:

Please don’t be upset by this, but I’d like to pick at what you said because I think it’s important.

Pifil.5193:

In my case I tried using the current megaserver system to do a few bosses, half simply didn’t spawn

Bugged events can be fixed. This is not evidence that Megaserver is a bad idea or unworkable. Plenty of events bugged before Megaserver. This isn’t even a new thing.

Pifil.5193:

the other half died so quickly in a hail of fire that it felt pointless, 10-15 mins prep for the Fire Elemental then it died in 30 seconds.

World Boss event scaling has always been a mess. My server routinely had tons of people in these events and all the bosses melted like this. This isn’t a problem caused by Megaserver, it’s existed for awhile.

World Boss event scaling can be fixed even if Megaserver remains.

Pifil.5193:

Given that and the fact that we can no longer use gw2stuff to let us know when a boss or temple is up so I’m operating in the kind of informational limbo that existed when the game first launched prompted me to pretty much give up on PVE for now while I try sPVP for a while.

You don’t need gw2stuff. The boss schedule is posted. I agree that Temples are more difficult.

I like sPvP, but don’t expect to get the love and attention of devs over there either…

Pifil.5193:

If/when they start fixing the megaservers I’ll give it another go but they really need to get a move on. Rolling “broken” software out that removes a bunch of features that people are used to and just leaving it there is never a good idea.

But it’s not broken. You just don’t like it.

Don’t worry, I’m not upset about any of this.

But it is broken. For example, the events worked fine before they were changed for the synchronised event schedule introduced for the mega-server. The bosses spawned when they should, now they don’t. So they broke those world boss events when they made the changes for the megaservers. Sure there were always broken events before but the point is that they broke these particular events as a side effect of implementing the megaserver system. The timeline was: events are fine, megaserver, events don’t work.

Similarly the world boss scaling was fine on my server before this. Now they’ve “broken” that scaling too by ensuring that there’s a huge number of players at them. Again a change that came about with the megaserver.

I needed gw2stuff for the events and the temples but they broke their APIs when they added the megaservers and made the associated changes to the world bosses so they no longer work. And yes the boss events are now listed on their website (some don’t work all of the time, now) but the temples are a complete mystery.

Sure, these can all be “fixed” in some way or another but how long will that take? ArenaNet don’t have a great track record in following up on these things and chances are that a lot of the feature pack team has already been reassigned to new teams for the upcoming season 2 of the Living Story.

Pifil.5193:

Sure, these can all be “fixed” in some way or another but how long will that take? ArenaNet don’t have a great track record in following up on these things and chances are that a lot of the feature pack team has already been reassigned to new teams for the upcoming season 2 of the Living Story.

If the events still glitch in a month, come back to me and I’ll be your punching bag. I’d expect them to fix it in the next week or two. (The bugged events, at least. Not the scaling.)

I wouldn’t worry as much about the Feature Pack team – the feature teams usually work independently from the content teams (there was a good presentation about this, I think for GDC?), so while they may have started on new features, they likely aren’t working on LS2 stuff. My guess would be that they’ve moved on to either Guild content (guild halls, better guild management options, additional ways for guilds to spawn events, fixes for guild missions with megaserver), WvW changes (improvements to Commander tags), or perhaps some client-side fixes (effects scaling, etc.)

Keep in mind that a “dev” is not an all-knowing all performing robot. You can’t take a UI designer and have them debug client-server communications. You can’t take a programmer and have them build a set of gemstore armor. That’s why they split into “feature” and “content” teams to begin with.

ceol.9175:

Look at this megaserver business. If you only read the forums, you’d think it was a massive failure and ArenaNet is the devil for not immediately rolling back the changes. But log in and ask people, and most would say they like it.

I… I don’t think we’re playing the same game.

Anet silence: People complain that they aren’t getting answers.
Anet gives an answer: People complain because they didn’t get exactly what they want, because “blah blah, I’m entitled to it, I don’t care about anyone else, blah blah blah”.

Porterhouse.6304:

I… I don’t think we’re playing the same game.

I have yet to see a single person complain in-game about the megaservers.
Nothing but indifference and love for it.

I can’t say I’ve heard much grousing in-game about the megaserver OUTSIDE of Divinity’s Reach where you’ll hear an RP group (and the trolls that harrass them) raising a stink.

The general sentiment I’ve seen (in-game at least) is at worst a “we’ll see how it shakes out”, and a lot of delight in previously low-populated areas.

viralthefrog.6130:

Anet silence: People complain that they aren’t getting answers.
Anet gives an answer: People complain because they didn’t get exactly what they want, because “blah blah, I’m entitled to it, I don’t care about anyone else, blah blah blah”.

Porterhouse.6304:

I… I don’t think we’re playing the same game.

I have yet to see a single person complain in-game about the megaservers.
Nothing but indifference and love for it.

Then you must not be watching very good or have selective reading, i’m on blackgate(which don’t mean much since megaserver just makes us one big server) where I see the ranting in every zone/city I go to.

Im Mudbone.1437:

viralthefrog.6130:

I have yet to see a single person complain in-game about the megaservers.
Nothing but indifference and love for it.

Then you must not be watching very good or have selective reading, i’m on blackgate(which don’t mean much since megaserver just makes us one big server) where I see the ranting in every zone/city I go to.

It’s funny that you mention that, because I remember that Blackgate was the server every other server would Guest into in order to complete special events, and the native Blackgatonians hated it!

I can only imagine what they think of being mixed into the great megaserver blender. =D